04 May 2008

You've just gotta feel sorry for all the simpletons who constantly run around screaming about prejudice and racism.

They imagine they're actually solving a horrible problem, by trying to silence anyone who makes any sort of inconvenient reference to contemporary "slap in the face" cultural reality.

THE STUBBORN CORE of violence in American cities is troubling and perplexing. Even as homicide rates have declined across the country — in some places, like New York, by a remarkable amount — gunplay continues to plague economically struggling minority communities.

For 25 years, murder has been the leading cause of death among African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has analyzed data up to 2005.

Of course, just by pointing out this reality... I have virtually ensured that some sad sack will drop by in the comments to label me a "creepy racist."

He won't try to dispute anything I've referred to, because, well... it'd be like disputing the existence of the sun or the moon... choosing instead to scream about my "flawed" personality.

Fortunately, there are other, more rational people out there... who just see a horrific problem, in desperate need of a solution.

CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist and a physician who for 10 years battled infectious diseases in Africa.

He says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, and so, he suggests, the treatment ought to mimic the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source.

Now... this may not be the answer to the problem... but in the short term, it appears to be gnawing away at the edges of a terrible plague on society.

And it's certainly more useful... than just screaming about racism and root causes... like so many of our fellow commentators in the benevolent fuzzy-bunny leftosphere.

"This wasn't a conference, in the main, of civil servants with cushy public sector union jobs. These were "anti-racism" grantrepreneurs -- people who had to hustle, every year, to liberate $50,000 or $75,000 from this government agency or that one, to keep going."

"They were what economists call "rent-seekers" -- or what Ayn Rand called 'moochers and looters'."